I've read Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty series, which fascinated me, as well as the Beauty Queen nove,l which made me laugh, and when i picked this book up I thought "Wow....sounds interesting." However I should have know better...

This book was not fascinating and no where near as funny as Beauty Queens. I thought I was going to see how crazy it could be for someone who's brain was degrading but instead I got more of Bray's opinions on modern day society like that in Beauty Queens but the setting didn't fit her opinion so it all just seemed wrong.

Bray takes shot after shot at youth entertainment mainly making fun of the television we watch, the things our generation find important, the people who idol, the resorts we vacation at and just about everything to do with our regular lives and makes it seem like the "loner" style teen/people are the ones who really understand this world.

Then throw in some fire giants, physics (which Libba skirts around really explaining and somehow makes it seem like they really know what they are talking about), an angel, and Yard Gnome believed to me the Norse god Baulder, and you have me uninterested and disappointed.

The sad thing was the book had such great potential in the beginning and actually had me interested and for that I had to read the remainder of the book, only to find the ending most disappointed where Bray tries to take a stab at Religions and what happens to us after death, which is a water that I think no one should dip their feet into unless under the right circumstance and with the right well written book.

Not that this book was not well written. Don't get me wrong Libba Bray knows proper grammar and writing styles, and doesn't lead her readers on as she interrupts Cameron's adventures with a little glimpse behind the curtain to what is really happening with Cameron.

And yes, there is no way that I can say truthfully that what happens in the book (the adventure that Cameron has) is not really what people imagine/think of when they have Mad Cow disease. People hallucinate ...I get that. And when they hallucinate they sometimes see some messed up things... I get that too, but somehow Bray seems to even stretch that.

I took me two months to read this novel. I read the first half very fast within 48 hours then the second half was just too much for me but I had to see how she was going to end it and I did.

I would have preferred to use my time reading another book instead of this. All and All not horrible just stretched and to much politics and opinion in a teen novel.

Cameron, your below average kid, was planning to just cruise through life under the radar. Why waste so much effort when we're all going to end up six feet under in the end? It isn't until one day when he finds out that he's diagnosed with a deadly disease that his whole view on the world is forced to change... And so begins his journey with a punk angel/hallucination, a dwarf, and a yard gnome. Also, physics.

The good: THIS BOOK IS INSANE! I have honestly never read a book like this before in my life. It's a book about being alive, about experiencing all that you can with everything that you are. It's about opening your mind to new ideas, about thinking outside the box, about imagining beyond the normal realms of physics. It's also about friendship, love, and hope. The writing itself is very upbeat, though it knows how to be dark when it wants to be. It's whimsical, though it balances itself out by the use of real physics theories. The plot is great, and gives you a lot to think about.

The bad: THIS BOOK IS INSANE! The first 76 pages were dull and uninspiring. For a book that promised adventure, it sure took its sweet time. But when the action does start, the book literally pushes your face to the ground in its hurry to show you the cool parts of the book. I don't mean that the book had a rushed pace - I mean that it throws about a million physics theories at you and pretty much goes, "You don't have to understand it... Just run with it!" I understood most of the theories since I took theoretical physics, but everyone else is going to be lost, and that's a big shame. You don't NEED to understand the physics to enjoy the book, but you'll have to pretty much turn off your brain when you get to the physics parts, because the book will not explain much to you - and unfortunately, the physics takes up a lot of the book.

Physicists will get the full impact of this book. For everyone else, turn off your brain and enjoy the ride.

This is one of the best teen science ficiton books i have ever read. Because it is a teen novel the book isn't completely sciencey. (it involves the main character, cameron doing drugs, partying, and thinking quite a bit about sex). I didn't know what to expect having read libba bray's a great and terrible beauty triology which is more of a fantasy magic kind of genre. I was surprised by this book in a good way, its definitely unexpected. It's twisted and random.
I was kind of expecting more from this book because it had won the michael l printz award for 2010. This book is more of a 3 star read for myself because its a little too teen fiction for me but its definitely a 4 star book if that makes sense. I think that many libba bray fans could be disappointed by this book because of it's science fiction genre.

This book was trying too hard. Trying too hard to be funny, too hard to be relatable, too hard to make sense. Okay, scratch the last one: this book made no sense at all. And that's a shame, because it had promise. When Libba Bray wasn't trying too hard, there were passages of utter brilliance. Coincidentally, most of these passages contained no dialogue and contained no mention of the characters. Hmmm. Some may argue that the nonsensical way in which events unroll contribute to the book's charm. And yeah, I can see that. But the author tok it too far. It's like she wanted to write the most random book (honestly, THE MOST RANDOM BOOK) possible and figured that she could get away with it by making the main character have mad-cow disease and for most of the book to be a hallucination. The randomness is no accident, as contradictory as that seems. If you read it (I'm not suggesting that you do) you will see that this is absolutely true. Though very few of the strings of the story are tied up by the end, the only question you'll be asking yourself is, "What did I just read?'